There was nothing Alec Baren liked better than to watch the colossal shovel rip the stones from the walls and the basin of the quarry with its powerful jaws, scoop them up then deposit huge chunks of limestone with a loud crash that could be heard forever into the beds of the coughing and grumbling dump trucks that impatiently waited their turns to be loaded. The scraping and gnawing away at the mountain was a sight to see. That was for dang sure.
Sometimes Alec could swear that he heard that clang and the rumble of the trucks as they made their way up the narrow gravel road that wound its way out of the wondrous pit as he lie in his bed late at night thirteen miles away in Cedarville. When he told his pa this, the man smiled and told him that that was impossible, but Alec would’ve sworn that yes, by God, he could too hear them.
How long has it been? he asked himself. How long has it been since pa drove us out here? It’s been an awful long time. We used to come here a lot. But pa hasn’t brought me here since before Ma went to heaven and before Jakey went off to the Air Force and before Joey just up went away.
Now it’s just pa and me and, of course, Zuzu, but she’s in high school and no longer any fun to play with. Pa says I can’t roughhouse with Zuzu no more, not like we used to. That she’s become a young lady. She used to love to wrestle on the rug in the living room every bit as much as I do, but now she’s not allowed to get down on the floor with me no more. So even Zuzu has gone away, even if she’s still around.
“Pa, why don’t we come here like we used to?” His father, a Marlboro cigarette in his hand, a scowl on his lined face, stared silently across the stream that struggled through the jumble of boulders and fallen oaks a hundred feet below. The man glared, as he always did, at the shovel and at the gigantic scar at the base of what used to be Moss Creek Mountain on the other side of that pathetic trickle of water, the line that, Alec had been told, marked where Rye County began and Spencer County ended. Alec couldn’t understand anything like that. He knew nothing about counties. He just knew that he lived in Cedarville, South Carolina and that seemed like more than enough. They didn’t teach counties in his class at Lee Middle School. Not yet.
“You’re here now, Alec.” His pa chuckled. “Don’t you like it as much as you used to?”
“Yes sir, I do.” Alec grinned as another thunderous metallic crash echoed through the surrounding hills and down the canyon. “I like it plenty.” He paused. He didn’t want to hurt his father’s feelings. Pa was good enough to bring me all the way up here on his day off from being the custodian at Zuzu’s school, he thought. I should let him know how much I appreciate it. “I like it plenty, but without Jakey and Joey to throw dirt clods at me and for Zuzu to tell’em them to stop pickin’ on me it ain’t the same.”
“No, Alec, it’s not the same. Things change, not always for the better. They just change.” The man coughed. “I think I’ve told you that when I was a boy my own father used to bring me up here to hunt on Moss Creek Mountain…back when there was a Moss Creek Mountain. That mountain, I swear, used to be covered with pines and with a few dogwoods thrown in to make a patchwork effect like you ain’t never seen. But the loggers came and did their dirty work.” He squinted into the afternoon sun that was preparing itself to disappear behind the distant hills. “And, Alec, you might not believe it, but we’d pull blue catfish as long as your forearm right out of that creek down there.”
“Did you eat’em?” asked the thirteen-year-old.
His father chuckled. “You betcha, we ate’em. There were times when that was all we had to eat. But my mama, your grandma, the one you never got to meet, could fry up catfish like no one you ever laid eyes on.” He winked at Alec, like he used to, before things seemed to go all haywire. “We ate so many catfish we began to think like a catfish. I’m tellin’ you, Alec, that my brother Martin started to look and even smell like a doggone catfish.” His father laughed, then sighed. “But all that’s gone I’m afraid, just like things in your life are gone.”
The boy looked down the ravine and across the quarry. They probably won’t do no blastin’ today, he figured. Shucks, they used to blast away at the side of the mountain and me and Jakey and Joey wouldn’t cover our ears, no matter how loud it got. Then we’d make fun of Zuzu for coverin’ hers. Sometimes ma came out here with us, but only a few times, back before she got so thin and weak that pa had to carry her to and from the car. She was even more of a sissy than Zuzu. She’d cover her ears every time. Pa always watched’em blast without sayin’ nothin. I guess he didn’t much like them tearing away more and more of his mountain.
The thought of his pa as a boy puzzled Alec. Was that before he married ma? And did pa have brothers and sisters like I’ve got? How does that work, he wondered. How could pa have once romped around the woods and rivers like me and Jakey and Joey and even Zuzu used to do? Then become a man with a job and a wife? I know everyone gets old, but I like to think of pa as never gettin’ no older than he is.
Alec picked up a stone and gave it a good fling down the ravine. He remembered how he and Joey used to search for rocks that looked like animals, a few like people. But without Joey that game had lost all of its luster. A rock is a rock, and nothing more. Even he knew that. But it was fun to pretend. Back when he was a kid.
“Pa,” said Alec. “Do you suppose Joey will ever come back?” He sniffled, but he didn’t want his pa to know he was sniffling. Next to Zuzu, Joey was his favorite. But one day, after ma had gone to heaven, Joey took off without letting anyone know he was going.
“I don’t know, Alec.” His pa didn’t take his eyes off of the distant hills. “Joey, like all of us, I suppose, has to find his way in this world.” Finally, his pa turned toward him. “That’s why I brought you out here today,” his pa smiled. “Since we lost your ma I’ve been doin’ the best I can to keep us all together. And you kids have helped as best you can, but now you’re all gettin’ older and need to find your own way. Jake and Joe have chosen their paths, now it’s just Zuzu and you. Zuzu’s in high school and you, Alec, are growin’ like a boy should.” He slowly shook his head. “It’s just that you’re gettin’ more mature. And Zuzu’s no longer a kid.” He took a deep breath.
“With the help of your teachers at school I’ve found another school for you, but it will mean that you’ll have to live away from home in that school, no longer in the bedroom you and Jake and Joey shared.
Alec tossed another stone down the hill. He’d heard of those schools from some of the boys in his class. “Pa,” he said. “Since Jakey’s in the Air Force do you suppose he can see ma up in heaven from his airplane?”
His pa shook his head. “From what Jake tells me when he calls he never gets inside any planes. He’s up in North Dakota. He works with the crews that take the ice off the wings of those planes. Alec, he doesn’t fly in’em. And, no, I don’t think anyone can see heaven. It’s not like that.” He sighed. “Did you hear what I said about changing schools?”
Alec kicked at the gravel at his feet. “Yes sir, I heard. It’s a school for dumb kids.”
“Who told you that?”
“The kids at school,” said Alec. He swiped at the tears in his eyes.
“Well, it’s not a school for dumb kids.”
“It is so.” Alec kicked up dust. “I’m already in the class at my school for dumb kids. Ain’t that enough, Pa?”
“Alec, you are not in the class for dumb kids. Do you hear me? Look at me, Alec. You are not dumb. You just learn different from other kids.” His father walked over and took the boy’s shoulders in his large, strong hands. “Don’t you let anyone tell you that you’re dumb.”
The boy sobbed. “The kids on the school bus call us stupid…and dumb…and idiots.”
His father shook him gently. “Listen to me, Alec. Those kids on the bus don’t matter at all. They’re nothing. They don’t matter.” He paused. “When you go to the new school no one will ever call you names. I promise you.”
“But what about you and Zuzu?” Alec wiped his nose with the sleeve of his denim shirt. “I won’t see you no more.”
“You’ll see me every weekend,” said his pa. “And, Alec, you’ll be around a bunch of boys like you, boys your age. You’ll make new friends. I promise you. You’re gonna like it better than the school you’re in.”
“And Zuzu? Will she come?”
His pa nodded. “Zuzu will come too.” He frowned. “Only Zuzu has made new friends also. She’ll come when she can. But I give you my word, we’ll both show up. And on some weekends and holidays you’ll come home. This won’t be no prison. It’s an opportunity. You mark my words, there will be times when you won’t have much time for me or even for Zuzu, ‘cause you’ll be havin’ so much fun with the other boys at the school.”
Alec hugged the large man. “I don’t want to go, Pa. Don’t make me.”
“I know. I know. But just you wait and see. You’re gonna like it.”
“Will we ever come back here?”
“You bet your life we will,” said his pa. “But I’ll bet you anything you won’t want to leave your new friends too often. Just you wait and see. Things are going to change for you…for the better.”
The boy wrapped his arms around his father’s neck. His body shook. “Will we still go and visit Ma’s grave?”
“Whenever you want,” said his father.
“Will Zuzu come?”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep her away.”
Alec held onto his father tightly. The clash and clang from the quarry again rumbled through the hills and down the canyon like the cannon fire in those very hills long ago, in a war his pa had told him about. Little by little, bite by bite the shovel was ripping away at Moss Creek Mountain, but that afternoon Alec could only hold onto what was real for him. Time itself was whittling away at his life. In his bed at the new school would he be able to hear the shovel and the trucks like he could from his bed at home? Or would they only become echoes of a time when Jakey and Joey bombarded him with dirt clods and Zuzu defended him while their pa stood silently and watched his mountain disappear one shovel load at a time.
